Going solar

I decided to go ahead and buy a solar trickle charger for my car battery, and here it is:

The installation was quite easy — just put on the suction cups, stick it to the windshield (which I cleaned and allowed to dry first), and plug it into the lighter socket. The little LED on the right there blinked to assure me it was delivering charge properly, and it was still blinking when I checked this morning, even though, as you can see from my reflection, the sun was coming from behind the car. I usually park facing west, and I think I get more hours of direct sunlight facing that way, since there are trees behind the car in that position. But clearly the panel doesn’t need direct sun to work, and I gather it even works on cloudy days. (I’m fairly sure this is the first solar-powered device I’ve ever owned, so this is all new to me.)

Incidentally, discovered yesterday that I need to lift my sunglasses to confirm that the LED is blinking, since it’s pure blue and the sunglasses filter out blue and UV light.

One concern is that it only has two suction cups (though the kit came with four, so I guess they’re spares); maybe I should’ve shopped for another model that had four. When I checked on the car this morning, I found that the driver’s side suction cup had come loose overnight, although that only changed the panel’s position slightly. The instructions say you should take it down before driving, maybe keep it in the glove compartment (though I’m not sure I have room in mine), but it seems it would be easier if I could leave it in place. Not sure the cups will hold well enough for that, since I haven’t tried driving with it yet. I will have to remember to unplug it before driving, at least, since the instructions say turning on the ignition could send harmful spikes through the plug if it’s left in.

Another concern, as you can see from the photo, is that the car tends to get very dusty. I think the dust comes from the blacktop they use to coat the parking lot, since it’s the only explanation for why my car keeps getting covered in sooty black dust when I drive it so infrequently. That could reduce the light the panel receives, so I’ll have to remember to wash the window more often.

But anyway, it apparently works, so hopefully I won’t have problems with my car battery draining or dying on me anymore. If so, it means I’ll have much less use for my portable jumpstarter pack — though I’ll still try to remember to top up its charge every three months per the instructions, just in case. It could also save me gas if I don’t need to drive around to top up a drained battery, though I estimate it would have to save me well over a hundred miles of driving before it paid for itself, which would take a long time.